The coffee here is horrid. I forget this little fact between visits. It is weak in flavor and appearance. As I settle into my place among the identical sets of heavily varnished oak furniture, I notice this restaurant offers a similar transparency. Country curtains on every window and systematically placed cut-glass salt and pepper shakers proclaim homey character. Maps printed on faux aged parchment and brochures labeled by decade tell us this place is rooted in our own ancestry. Here our personal memories have been catalogued for us, our own character defined.

The character they would have us find here is one of home as if presented in the tidiness of a Norman Rockwell painting. Yes, this place has character written all over the walls, menus, nick-knacks, and the wardrobes of the waitresses. It is a script carefully written by some deliberate designer and published by a majority vote in a boardroom. Yet, if it reads character it reads too loudly…

… This place fails. It isn’t the character that fails. This restaurant doesn’t lack for location, or presentation. What is missing here is something less easily conjured up on design tables or decided upon in board rooms.

The ‘Stinky Cat Coffee Shop’ wasn’t pre-planned. It just happened. Over time, it grew. In its own lore the place was a house, a home. People lived here. They dreamed away nights, ate breakfast together, thought of and planned for days at work and activities at school. They went about practical tasks and created meaningful moments. There are records of this planning and living preserved here. Faint lines on the back of doors catalog the slow ascent of children. Scars on the cabinet doors mark the memory of child safety latches. Claw marks on a door frame are deep assurance that a cat was part of the family.

Time passed and the family left. The house passed from family to tenant to vacancy with each chapter adding its own story to the place. For a while the building sat empty, housing only the occasional vagrant that slipped in to sleep or drink himself into unconsciousness. One sometimes stood in the corner and peed himself when he could do no better. Those stains don’t really come out, no matter how many times you clean and polish. The stains fade and become part of the character of the wood, but they do not disappear.

People disappeared and smaller occupants arrived. Squirrels hoarded acorns, rats nested, insects bored into the wood and things too small and transient to leave much of a legacy for us to see all made their contributions. In the scratches on the doors, the discolorations of the wood, the layers of paint, partially missing wallpaper and yellowed tile they all left their marks. People, insects and rodents alike have all left something of themselves…

…This place speaks its story softly but intently brushing against every occupant, purring an old and worthy message…